Call Down the Moon (21 page)

She dimly heard him call her name, felt him hold hard and deep. His muscles gathered and released in a great shudder as he poured into her, a warm flood, his life merging with hers.

The pieces of Meggie’s fragmented consciousness slowly gathered together as she drifted back to the world, to herself. She had no sense of the passage of time, knew only that her heart had finally steadied and that her breath had returned to her body. She felt formless, anchored only by Hugo’s weight against her.

He lay still and heavy in her arms. His own arms wrapped around her, his forehead resting on her shoulder, his heart beating against her, slow and hard. She ran her fingers over his slick skin, dreamily tracing the outline of muscle and sinew.

His hands moved on her back, slow and lazy. “Meggie,” he murmured, his voice drowsy, so low she could hardly hear it. “Meggie, tell me you are happy.”

“I am happy,” she answered, pressing her lips to the top of his dark head, his hair so soft, so fine, still damp from exertion. He shifted to his side and leaned up on one elbow, looking down at her. His other hand reached out, gently drawing a line from temple to cheek.

“Good,” he said, his fingers moving to the nape of her neck and stroking there. “As am I. I will not lie to you and tell you there haven’t been other women—there have been many. But none has touched me as you have, my sweet Meggie. Not a one.”

He lightly wrapped his hand around one of her wrists and carried it to his mouth. The tip of his tongue delicately caressed the sensitive flesh on the underside and stroked up to her palm.

“You are trying to be kind,” she said, suddenly shy. “I know that I still have much to learn, but perhaps next time you will show me how you would really like me to touch you. I—well, you know I haven’t had any experience.”

He drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “No. That’s not what I meant. I don’t know how to make you properly understand, but you must believe me when I tell you that I have never…” He paused as if carefully measuring his words. “Never felt such completion.”

“Oh.” She ran a finger down his chest, over the soft patch of hair that bisected his pectoral muscles. “I am glad. I felt the same. May we do it again soon?”

Hugo dropped his forehead against her neck, smothering a snort of laughter. “Mmm,” he said, nipping at her earlobe. “Very soon and all night long if I can manage to keep up my strength. I can see that you are going to tax it.”

Meggie smiled happily. “I will do my best,” she said, thinking Hugo had found a very nice, albeit subtle, way of telling her that he loved her.

Completion. She’d have to file that euphemism away for her own future use.

“W
hat the bloody hell?”

Hugo, who had just rolled over in order to devote his full concentration to Meggie’s sweet and responsive mouth before devoting himself to Meggie’s other sweet and responsive body parts, jerked his head up. His attention snapped to the French doors through which came the muted but unmistakable shouts and howls of a rowdy mob.

He didn’t bother to question who they were or what they wanted: every finely honed, ingrained instinct for survival that he’d developed over the years told him to act immediately and without conscious thought. He instantly pushed himself upright, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and dived for his discarded clothes.

They can’t be here to lynch you for sleeping with someone else’s wife, since this one is mine, his brain insisted through his panic as he scrambled into his trousers. You know you haven’t gotten any of the local girls pregnant, either, so what the devil do they want you for? It has to be something.

At that moment, Meggie sat up, pulling the sheet across her breasts, watching him with a huge grin on her face. “Why, I do believe we have visitors,” she said. “It looks as if you heard them, too.”

“I don’t know what you’re smiling for,” he said curtly, thinking Meggie was a real danger to herself if she didn’t have the good sense to be terrified. “For all we know, they’ve come to bum the house down or murder us in our bed—although God only knows why. I haven’t been in residence long enough to do anything objectionable.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Meggie replied, looking highly amused. “They’ve come to cheer you.”

“What the blazes makes you think that?” he said, buttoning his flaps and shrugging into his wrinkled shirt. The damned wolf. Maybe that was it. They’d come to demand Hadrian’s instant dispatch—yes, that made sense, or better sense than anything he’d come up with so far.

“Well, it is your wedding night, and you are lord of the manor,” Meggie said, as if this was the obvious explanation.

“Exactly, it’s my wedding night, and they know I’m busy with—with wedding business, so you’d think they’d leave me alone. Where is Roberto, anyway? It’s his job to keep uninvited mobs off the grounds.”

“Hugo,” Meggie said gently, “they are not a mob, they are your tenants. Go out onto the balcony and greet them, and they’ll soon be on their way. They only want to wish you well and thank you.”

“Thank me? For what?” he said, frowning. And then he remembered. He’d ordered Coldsnap to arrange a celebration for the tenants that evening, which had obviously gone off as planned.

From the raucous sound of the crowd below, a great quantity of good food and an even larger quantity of wine and ale had been consumed. “Oh,” he said, feeling like a fool for having automatically assumed they intended the worst. Force of habit, he supposed—he wasn’t accustomed to being regarded as a hero. “I forgot about the feast.”

“Clearly,” she said with a chuckle. “Go on, then. The longer you keep them waiting, the noisier they’re going to get. Oh, and just so you know, you have rose petals stuck in your hair.”

Hugo ran his fingers over his head, thinking that his life bore absolutely no resemblance to the one he’d been leading only thirty hours before—the perfectly
normal
life he’d been leading before stepping into the insane asylum and taking Meggie out.

He seemed to have taken not just Meggie, but the entire asylum away with him.

Although … although as hard as he tried, he couldn’t really complain.

He opened the glass doors and stepped out onto the balcony, looking down over the balustrade to the crowd of boisterous people singing and shouting on the moon-washed lawn below.

The moment they spotted him, an ear-splitting roar went up.

“Lord Hugo, Lord Hugo,” they changed, waving mugs in the air. Their faces were one huge communal grin.

Scores of men, women, children had gathered, as well as Reginald Coldsnap, Roberto, Cookie, and … and he nearly choked. Cookie, in some misguided fit of solidarity, had dragged along the damned wolf who howled away like the rest of them. Incredibly, no one seemed to care.

They actually had come to wish him well, just as Meggie had said, for those were the sentiments being shouted up at him, or at least the ones he could actually make out.

“Bless hew, yer lordship! May the Good Lord Hisself rain blessings on yer head!”

“Thank’ee, sah, thank’ee! The feasting were grand!”

“An’ now you’re married we wish ye joy an’ every year a gal or a boy!” said another.

“All good wishes, Lord Hugo, for a happy and prosperous future. Your celebration was a great success and much appreciated, as you can see.” That from Coldsnap, whom at least Hugo could understand clearly.

“Whoop, yer lordship, what a night we are havin’ thanks to ye, and I’ll give ye a proper Suffolk toast,” cried someone else. “Here’s to my wife’s husband, and down goo the rest o’ the ale.”

The man drained his mug, swayed and rocked, then fell forward to his knees and over onto his side.

“And down goo owd Jimmy,” snorted a grizzled man who looked to Hugo as if he’d been on the high seas all his life. “He
should
o’ said, here’s to the new husband’s wife, and down goo the husband.”

He laughed uproariously at his own joke, then attempted to sober, raising his own mug toward the balcony. “Thank ye, sah. Thank ye for me and mine. The future do look master fine agin, and all our bellies full wi’it.”

A shared cry of “‘ear, ‘ear,” followed.

Hugo couldn’t believe his ears. In his entire twenty-six years, no one had ever cheered him—or at least not for anything honorable. A hard lump formed in his throat, and he cursed himself for being a sentimental fool.

Still, he couldn’t seem to help himself. He was touched, deeply touched by this show of genuine affection and appreciation, and deeply humbled as well. He had to blink rapidly against the sting of unwelcome tears, feeling ashamed at his loss of control. His people needed to see a man of strength, not a sniveling weakling.

Meggie appeared as if by magic at his back. Her hand lightly reached up to rest on his shoulder, almost as if she had sensed his need. He turned to wrap his arm around her slender shoulders, to bring her forward so that the crowd might see her, too, and be glad.

Although when he saw how she was dressed, he was concerned that the crowd might see just a little too much of his wife.

Barefooted Meggie wore only a night shift and a shawl, and her hair streamed loose over her shoulders and back. The rising moon showered golden light down over her, streaming over her flaxen hair, catching in the fibers of her white shawl and shift, once again creating the perfect illusion of an angel.

As he moved her around to his side, she glanced up at him. Her lips curved in a joyous smile, her eyes filled with love.

Hugo’s heart nearly stopped.
Love?

Oh, God—oh, God. It was bad enough that she thought he loved her, but now Meggie thought she loved him? What in hell was he going to do?

The deafening cry that went up as Meggie came into view distracted him from his panic. He’d deal with it later. That was the answer. He’d deal with it much, much later.

Meggie slipped her arm around his waist, pulling her shawl close with her free hand. “Hello,” she called, as if she were perfectly accustomed to dealing with huge crowds come to sing her praises. “Did you have a lovely party?”

A shouted chorus of “ayes” and “yasses,” came back.

“Good,” she called again. “My husband is a very kind and generous man, is he not?”

The shouts became a roar. Meggie laughed and turned to Hugo. “I think they like you.”

He could only shake his head in amazement. He swallowed hard, then raised his hand, waiting for the noise to die down. “Thank you all,” he shouted. “You are very kind to come and wish my wife and myself happiness on this special day. I wish the same back to you, and prosperity for us all.” Another pause for the cries of approval. “And now that you have had your fun, perhaps you’d be so kind as to allow me to get back to mine.”

Shrieks of laughter and more catcalls and a few ribald comments came back to him. He pulled Meggie hard against his side and waved.

“Right hew are, yer lordship,” shouted Cookie. “I dessay it’s time to be findin’ our beds and hew be goin’ back to yers. ‘Struth, looks unto to me like a tempest be brewing this night.”

This last statement brought screams of delight from the crowd, who slowly began to dissipate. They broke into drunken ditties to help them on their way, and old Jimmy was hoisted up on one shoulder to be carried away.

Hugo held Meggie tightly as he watched the last of them melt away into the night, their singing becoming fainter and fainter until all that could be heard was the low sighing of the wind in the trees and the distant trilling of a nightingale.

Meggie pressed her head back against his shoulder. “That was wonderful. Truly wonderful.”

He lightly stroked her hair. “How did you know?” he asked.

She tilted her head and gazed up at him, her gray eyes full of sharp question. “How did I know it was wonderful? Hugo, really—sometimes I wonder if you think I have no brain at all.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said abruptly, for lack of a better response. He’d conveniently forgotten she didn’t perceive the simplest of statements in a normal fashion.

Almost as if to prove his point she threw her head back and crowed with laughter. “There you are. You cannot have it both ways, dear man. Either I am to be stupid or I am not. You must tell me which you prefer, for the way you constantly change your mind will surely scramble my already confused wits.”

“If you honestly wish to know,” he said as casually as he could manage, wishing she hadn’t reminded him of her scrambled wits, “I prefer you exactly as you are.” There. That was tactful.

“Exactly as I am? Really? Do you really mean it?” she asked, her eyes shining with that inner light that made his heart turn over.

“I really mean it,” he said truthfully. “You are beautiful to me, Meggie. Beautiful and sweet and incredibly innocent.”

“Not so innocent anymore,” she replied, a wicked, entirely earthly gleam creeping into those ethereal eyes. “And if we hadn’t been interrupted, I do believe I’d be even less so.”

“Never fear, I left a place-marker. I believe it was just about here,” he said, lowering his mouth and capturing her smiling lips under his own, running his tongue along their honeyed outline before parting them and gently invading her soft inner recesses.

“Mmmm.” Meggie sighed in contentment as he finally lifted his head. “I could easily become accustomed to this.”

“Oh, you will become very, very accustomed,” he said, smoothing his hands over her soft hair. Everything about Meggie was soft. Her skin, her breath, her eyes, her touch. And oh, how soft was the feel of her inner flesh, so hot and slick and giving around him. The thought alone intensified his arousal.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” Meggie said, leaning against him, oblivious to his swiftly growing need. “I think I can smell the sea, Hugo. And if you listen very carefully, you can hear the cry of a shore bird every now and then. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Lovely,” he said, not referring to the shore birds.

“There’s a full moon tonight,” she said, gazing up at the brilliant golden circle that hung halfway between the black outline of the lightly swaying treetops and the silver glitter of the stars. “The light makes the birds and animals restless.”

Hugo dropped a kiss on the top of her head. Not just the animals are restless. But he told himself firmly that he could wait. Meggie was happy in the moment, rhapsodizing away. Surely she couldn’t rhapsodize for very much longer?

“Hadrian’s always been partial to full moons,” Meggie continued, showing no signs of stopping her soliloquy on nature and its virtues. “I’m so glad Cookie brought him along.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say Hadrian had been drinking with the best of them, given the amount of noise he was making,” Hugo answered, making a concerted effort to indulge her.

“Oh, that was just Hadrian calling down the moon,” she said.

“Calling down the moon?” Hugo said, still not accustomed to Meggie’s odd way of phrasing things. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”

Meggie slanted a look up at him from over her shoulder. “Well, he sings to the moon with his soul.”

“You think that wolf has a
soul?”
Hugo said incredulously.

“Of course he does,” she said seriously. “Every creature has a soul, and every soul has a unique voice. The problem is that most of us—humans, that is—forget to use it; we’re afraid of unleashing the force of our inner natures. But Hadrian has no such fear—he celebrates his wildness, and he honors creation and the natural cycles of life when he offers up his song.”

Hugo just looked at her. She really was gone, poor girl.

“Really.” She flashed a grin at him. “You should try howling at the moon sometime. It feels wonderful.”

No wonder they were called lunatics, Hugo thought, if they stood around baying at the moon. Oh, well. As long as she didn’t do it around him—or anyone else for that matter—he could safely ignore this latest aberration.

“Howling is also part of pack behavior,” she said, oblivious to his extended silence. “Hadrian sees us as his pack, or his family, and I imagine he perceives your tenants as part of his extended pack, so he was happy to join his song with theirs. They certainly made him welcome, didn’t they?”

“They did indeed, and I’ve been meaning to ask. Why
do
you think that people seem to have no fear of him? Wolves are considered to be dangerous predators, you know.”

She looked back out over the lawn to where the silver moonlight danced on the river’s surface. “Maybe people aren’t afraid because he doesn’t behave like a dangerous predator,” she replied. “He’s sweet and gentle and generally courteous, and he conducts himself like an overgrown dog, which is what most people think he is. If it wasn’t for the color of his eyes, I’m sure no one would ever guess he really was anything but a dog. Anyway, he
likes
people, so they tend to like him.” She looked back up at the sky as if that explained everything.